In Support of Richard Stallman | Hacker News Reader

In Support of Richard Stallman

stallmansupport.org

266 pointstodsacerdoti93 comments

So this is literally a website dedicated to defending the character of a major figure in the open-source world, and it gets flagged.

This is HN - people should be able to make their own judgement on the content of the site and discuss it here.

There was a massive thread about this a couple weeks ago: Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224 - March 2021 (854 comments)

Since then, there have been over 100 follow-up submissions. (Not a typo! Over 100 submissions in just two weeks.) I've posted a list of the larger threads below. If you click through those links, you'll see that most have been flagged. They were flagged by users, not moderators.

From a moderation point of view, the issue isn't Stallman—the issue is repetition. Curiosity withers under repetition (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) and flamewar burns it to a crisp.

Stallman is on topic for HN, obviously. But endless flamewar is off topic, and the latter trumps the former. In a situation like this, we usually wait for Significant New Information (SNI) to show up. Has there been SNI since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224? I haven't seen it.

I wouldn't mind turning off flags on another large discussion about this, since the last one was 2 weeks ago and there is obviously an appetite for it (among some HN users) in addition to aversion to it (among others). Aversion has been having its way lately, so we could give appetite a chance. However, it would require an article that is capable of supporting a more substantive discussion. In particular, it would have to be something other than a "yay RMS" or a "boo RMS".

There's another issue too: if we turn off the flags on a Yay or a Boo, people will accuse us of being Yayers or Booers, and generally we prefer not to release the hounds of hell on ourselves. People accuse us of that anyway; imagine what they'd do with a big fat juicy data point.

Edit: if there is any question I haven't answered, please let me know - but please read this comment and its cousins (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26714003 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26713701) first, to make sure that it's truly unanswered.

HN threads with 10 or more live comments since Stallman went back to FSF:

In Support of Richard Stallman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26707498 - April 2021 (58 comments)

Richard Stallman Has Been Vilified by Those Who Don’t Know Him - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26681014 - April 2021 (25 comments)

Richard Stallman Removed from the GCC Steering Committee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26670379 - April 2021 (97 comments)

The FSF unionised because of RMS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26649968 - March 2021 (43 comments)

Richard Stallman FSF support/remove letter signature counts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26646423 - March 2021 (41 comments)

Libreboot – Defend Richard Stallman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26646048 - March 2021 (235 comments)

Red Hat Withdraws from the Free Software Foundation After Stallman’s Return - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26626512 - March 2021 (26 comments)

Stallman's return denounced by the EFF, Tor, Mozilla, and the creator of Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26624951 - March 2021 (54 comments)

Not the First Time We Tried (FSF, GNU, RMS, etc.) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26611519 - March 2021 (70 comments)

“The Tor Project is joining calls for Richard M. Stallman to be removed [...]" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26610061 - March 2021 (35 comments)

Remove RMS from the GCC Steering Committee - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598066 - March 2021 (59 comments)

Red Hat Pulls Free Software Foundation Funding over Richard Stallman's Return - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26596378 - March 2021 (104 comments)

Red Hat statement about RMS’s return to the Free Software Foundation board - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26585378 - March 2021 (78 comments)

Stallman isn't great, but not the devil - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26579225 - March 2021 (63 comments)

Statement on Re-Election of Richard Stallman to Free Software Foundation Board - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26575214 - March 2021 (28 comments)

Return of Stallman sparks outrage among open-source and free software leaders - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574186 - March 2021 (19 comments)

Mozilla, Tor Join Calls to Oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26573717 - March 2021 (220 comments)

An open letter in support of RMS being reinstated by the FSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26568144 - March 2021 (106 comments)

The X.Org Foundation is joining calls for RMS to be removed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26565579 - March 2021 (11 comments)

RMS Support Letter - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26565107 - March 2021 (47 comments)

About the RMS Cancellation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26562247 - March 2021 (27 comments)

Free software advocates seek removal of Richard Stallman and entire FSF board - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26562138 - March 2021 (13 comments)

OSI Response to RMS’s Reappointment to the Board of the Free Software Foundation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26559049 - March 2021 (11 comments)

rms-open-letter.github.io - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26558348 - March 2021 (139 comments)

Richard Stallman back at Free Software Foundation, says he won’t quit again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26544440 - March 2021 (26 comments)

Richard Stallman is coming back to the board of the FSF - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224 - March 2021 (855 comments)

When the topic comes up on /r/linux, the thread gets locked because no fruitful discussion can come of "He wasn't that bad!"/"Yes he was!"/"No, he wasn't!" ad nauseam.

That's why the flaggings happen here, too.

Not attacking you, but that line of defense would play a lot better if they didn't allow any discussion of the FSF board or Stallman at all. They have, however, allowed other strong opinions on the site before.

It just feels.. eh.

There's no problem with FSF or Stallman being discussed on HN. All that is on topic in principle. What's not on topic is endless repetition of a same-old flamewar.

When there's a major ongoing topic, one important test is whether there's SNI (Significant New Information) in a submission—or just a follow-up that's continuing the same discussion. If there's no SNI, chances are high that the discussion will be a repeat, and when the topic is highly polarized, you'll get a repeat of the same flamewar. That's what we really don't want here, so we downweight such follow-ups.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

These principles are well-established on HN and have nothing specifically to do with Stallman, let alone whatever opinions the mods have or don't have. You'll see the same patterns about any major ongoing topic that's highly divisive. Assange stories, for example, are pretty much an exact parallel.

Your comment suggests you may feel like there's a bias in which opinions are being "allowed" - that's not the case. See my explanation above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26713636. It's all too easy to feel like the local authorities are biased against your view, but that perception is in the eye of the beholder—i.e. it's rooted in cognitive biases, such as the one where people notice the cases they dislike and overlook the others (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).

Do you apply this rule evenly? Do you think that some topics are more trouble than they are worth?

Some example topics being US/China geopolitics or the story about "men clamming up" around women.

Fruitful discussion can be made in both of these but it very often is not.

We do our best to apply it evenly.

> Do you think that some topics are more trouble than they are worth?

This is too generic a question to answer meaningfully. Probably, but it's more a question of whether a given submission is intellectually interesting and capable of supporting a substantive discussion.

> Some example topics being US/China geopolitics or the story about "men clamming up" around women.

You're conflating two different categories there. One (US/China geopolitics) is one of the most common flamewar topics that gets posted to HN, with discussions getting asymptotically worse, past the point where it's not clear that the forum can handle it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26643703

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630159

The other was a specific article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612918) on a specific topic that really hasn't had much attention. I spent the better part of a day moderating the latter. I don't know if that answers your question or not but from my perspective it's the same principles being applied in all cases.

One important thing to realize is that we're trying to optimize HN for just one thing, which is curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... A lot of moderation calls that might seem weird or inconsistent make a lot of sense once you understand the chain of derivation from that rule.

How do you see that it was flagged? This looks like a normal post to me, but I see this "flagged" comment frequently, but don't understand what people are seeing. Thx.

It might be triggered at a certain karma level but when I look at those threads directly I see the title prefixed with “[flagged]”.

Probably flagged because it's political content.

Political stories are not off-topic on HN as such. On-topic stories are ones that gratify intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and plenty of those have political overlap. However, for a story to be on topic for HN, it needs to be intellectually interesting and capable of supporting a substantive thread. Many political stories tend to be sensational rather than intellectually interesting, and also tend to be extremely repetitive. Those are some of the qualities that make a submission off topic for HN (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...)

There are many past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869, which shows how far back political discussion goes on HN, as well as the argument about politics on HN.

If anyone still has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate of curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), I'd really like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.

There's currently lots of it on the front page: gay marriage, housing policy, Mark Zuckerberg is using on Signal. Seems the current guideline leads to selective enforcement based on unstated background motives.

There are no unstated motives nor background motives—we've been stating them in the foreground for years! Unfortunately, communication on the internet is largely stateless, so no matter how many times you explain something, the bulk of the audience will not have heard it and/or will make up some other explanation.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26713701 and my other posts in this thread for plenty of explanation.

So I went to their "Debunking False Accusations" page, then clicked through and read the email ("Email #2"), then returned to the page. It feels like they set up a bunch of straw-men which they then went on to debunk.

They don't actually defend the content of "Email #2" but instead claimed that people said untrue things about it and then said those were "lies." But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking, they're just punching air, while leaving the actual inflammatory content of "Email #2" largely uncontested.

Their Claim #4 debunking is essentially just saying "this is accurate, but he changed his mind at some point after this all blow up" (in Sept 2019). Keep in mind that Claim #4 is "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntary pedophilia harms children" from 2006 until it was recanted 10+ years later.

Honestly contrition and growth are better avenues for Stallman rather than this type of "attack the critics" stuff, in particular when they're as weak of defenses and nameless critics as shown here. This is one of those things that someone should have written, read back, slept on, and then hit the delete key because they realized it defeats itself.

>But without citing the untrue claims they're debunking

I can link you a few, such as the titles of https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r... and https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...

>after this all blow up

He changed his mind on or before 2016, before this all blew up https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Biograp...

Is it wrong to be skeptical of stuff? We aren't all born with the innate knowledge that "voluntarily pedophilia harms children", it is not something that I personally agree with but surely you also at some point thought of something that the wider society would consider as disgusting, his blog just served as a place to put some random raw unprocessed thoughts that he had on news stories.

Also, he is apparently transphobic because of an article he wrote on pronouns. At least admit that this is ridiculous. The misogyny and ableism claims are similarly stupid, but who cares?

> Claim #4 is "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntary pedophilia harms children" from 2006 until it was recanted 10+ years later.

Correction of omission: he changed his mind 2016 or earlier.

And much of the “defence” seems to be based on the idea that Stallman needs his word interpreted specially because of something else he said years earlier or because he was emotional.

It’s a lot of words that are likely to sound convincing to those who already believe he didn’t do anything wrong, but to most people seem to be just a list of excuses.

Yes, it is good form to link to the claims you are debunking, but these claims are not strawmen. If you want an example of people making untrue claims about "Email #2", here's one very popular Medium post doing just that:

> ... and then says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing".

https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-fec6ec21...

The dead comment next to mine has more examples. That said, the line

> I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

is incredibly disgusting, no matter how you look at it.

I happen to suspect that RMS is wrong on the pedophilia point, but if all you can say about it is that you find it disgusting, alarm bells should be going off in your head that there may be something here which You Can't Say (in the http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html sense).

This all reminds me of the sexuality portrayed among children in Brave New World, or the supposed homosexuality of Ancient Greece. What I suspect is happening here is that even voluntary pedophilia is harmful for children relative to our current society, but who knows what the case would be in a very differently structured society. Sexuality by definition is largely about how we relate with other people, so what is our isn't harmful in sexual development almost certainly depends at least in part on the society we live in.

Which means that forces that want to conserve the relevant aspects of our society have an incentive to censor RMS on any thoughts along those lines.

It occurs to me (but I can no longer edit) that I wrote the above comment while only thinking about children after puberty. The Epstein connection of the larger story primed me into that frame, and the comment would have looked differently if I'd also considered sex with, say, 6 year olds.

I still don't think "disgusting" is the right category for RMS's "thinking out loud on the internet", but the remark was definitely dangerously naive of the developmental stages of children.

It's also sobering to see how easy it is for myself to write something that can be interpreted to sound much more nefarious than what was really in my head when I wrote it.

I'm not a huge fan of RMS as a person, he's an incredibly difficult individual and ideological to the point that he refuses to take even reasonable arguments into account.

On that topic though, I understood it to be an academic exercise, just a case of internal inquiry, and not a statement of personal motivation of any kind. I don't believe it is disgusting to objectively consider any concept without bias, even if I disagree with the consideration itself. Consideration of any ideas being off limits is indistinguishable from heresy.

I hope this is not flagged into oblivion like other Stallman threads.

RMS was truly beyond his time, even when everyone thought he was crazy. It's sad to see a legend go down because a misinformation campaign.

"Stallman's comprehensive personal philosophy on social matters can make people uncomfortable."

Could you include a bit on the site that discusses RMS' "pleasure cards" and how he continued to hand them to women even after he was asked to stop because it made people uncomfortable? https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849

It is a joke on "business or pleasure" and he gave it to both men and women https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574720

This is the first time that I read that "he was asked to stop".

Devils advocate: is there any proof that these aren't just business cards using poor taste humor, like Zuck's "I'm CEO, Bitch." card?

Who exactly coined the "pleasure card" moniker?

You also noted he continued to hand them out after being asked to stop, but the link doesn't seem to corroborate that (and is a random Twitter accusation at that).

It seems like the users of this site would rather downvote this than actually take the time to think of a response.

You have to admit that the open letter paints him as something much worse than that though. Quite the vicious and hotheaded campaign that naturally ended up being divisive. At least they did not call him racist.

I remember “tender hugs” being quite the thing in the last quarter of the 20th century.

What else is notable about his card?

I'm really trying to understand the issue with the card itself, but the tweet has no further context. Did he only give these out to women? Were they given with other social cues that would indicate he was handing them out as a way to hit on or make a sexual advance towards women? If either of those things are true then I'd understand. But the cards alone look like a business card from a person with a slightly odd sense of humor.

He made people uncomfortable. He was asked to stop. He was reported. He kept doing it.

So it's not a "slightly odd sense of humor." It's not humor if no one laughs. If someone tells me something makes them uncomfortable, I stop it.

How many people were made uncomfortable? How many times was he asked to stop? Is it documented anywhere, other than this persons tweet? And why are they being called "pleasure cards"? It makes it sound like these were handed out in order to solicit sex from women.

Do none of these details matter? Am I going crazy? Why are so many people so incurious about factual information once there is any mention of the word "uncomfortable" or "unsafe"?

I think it’s called a “pleasure card” because it’s supposed to be the opposite of a “business card” (like the idiom “business or pleasure”.)

Ever seen clowns? Some of them make quite a business out of making people uncomfortable

"comfort the disturbed -- disturb the comfortable"

Making people uncomfortable is essentially free speech. wtf should he be ostracized for doing that?

Now, if the Org he's giving a speech for and giving these out at, doesn't like him doing it and asks him not to but he still does it. then THEY are within their right to eject him.

But no flash outrage social media push has any right to "cancel" the guy because he creeps them out a little.

Just dont take the card. request he leave you alone. He'll either get the message or he wont... if he doesn't then that is harassments. (albeit a very minor sort) but enough to request security/police to step in and communicate more directly to his hind-brain.

Beginning to see some of the arguments that the "right" make about cancel culture... and I a lefty.

Where's the proof of that? Because it's not in the random Twitter allegation.

Who asked him to stop? What specifically was said? When was he reported? When did he keep doing it?

I've heard this allegation multiple times, and have yet to see any proof.

Just an observation, the male/female ratio on this support letter is dramatically higher than on the letter pushing for resignation https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

This would make intuitive sense as there are two different crowds watching two movies here.

The older, more male-skewed crowd is familiar with rms from his pioneering work in Free Software, and is willing to cut him leniency on past indiscretions, cringey jokes, and off-the-cuff political rants.

The younger, more gender mixed crowd sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley companies at which they work, and they've all been raised on iPhones, etc. rms is yet another toxic male from the old guard; another loathsome dinosaur.

I don't think your description of the second group is very charitable.

Charitable or no, it seems to be accurate in a day and age where large corporations "heart" "open source" while simultaneously hindering software freedom, digital privacy, and the like on never-before-seen scales. It seems mighty convenient that public outrage happens to be aiming at one of the most vocal opponents of things like DRM and online surveillance, and happens to be of at least some benefit to those peddling said DRM and online surveillance.

And it doesn't seem like that second group has much of an intention to be "charitable" to those in the first group or the sympathizers thereof. That doesn't necessarily mean there's free reign to be as uncharitable as possible, but it does encourage that feeling to be mutual.

But this is begging the question. The post assumes that Stallman's good work does outweigh the bad and that the only way to conclude that he is causing problems is if one doesn't believe in the FSF principles at all. But that's just not true. One can absolutely be in support of the most intense FSF principles and still conclude that Stallman is not an appropriate leader. As evidence, consider the actual FSF members who support his ousting. They aren't just corporate stooges who see GPL as a cancer.

This would be a more compelling argument if many of the signatories of the anti-RMS letter weren't also former employees of the FSF.

This is not an argument at all.

If you ask any former employee about his old boss, the opinion is more likely to be negative (or else he'd be a current employee). It is rather rare for people to part with the job amicably.

If RMS as a boss consistently makes hundreds of people, who are otherwise interested in working at the FSF, unhappy enough to quit. That is absolutely an indictment of his abilities as a leader.

Also, the fact that these people were ever employees of the FSF invalidates the claim that they're a group that "sees little to no value in the FS movement; GPL is a nuisance to the Silicon Valley companies at which they work", since they're FSF employees who don't work for Silicon Valley companies and presumably like the GPL, as they work at the FSF.

Could you please publish your results? Exploring this would be interesting. Did you account for non-english and gender neutral names? So far it seems that Americans are over-represented in the open letter.

What about the ratio on this one?

https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web

What's the ratio of each? Is there a tracker?

Not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but I get the feeling they'd be different if you were only counting biological women as female.

>Not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but I get the feeling they'd be different if you were only counting biological women as female.

Leah is an outspoken defender of FSF.

https://libreboot.org/news/rms.html#rms-is-not-transphobic https://twitter.com/n4of7

Transpeople are probably still targeted by the propaganda more than biological women are.

I mean those as two intersecting groups (lost the word when editing).

For people who understand french (or can use translation tool)

this is the only account back in 2019 of the events:

https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/09/17/richard-sta...

It scores much higher to me on journalism than whatever came in US press.

It seems people in US don't value defending free speech, and tend to get offended easily due to taking things only on first degree.

In that frame, they should care more about defending the first amendment of their constitution, and try to get other degree when interpreting words they have negative reaction to.

I don't know how to solve the issue, but I've started trying tackling some of this in context of code of conducts affecting many sofware communities:

https://github.com/ContributorCovenant/contributor_covenant/...

Why does HN moderation staff keep flagging posts related to Stallman? This topic is extremely important and yet they're trying to prevent any discussion of it.

The posts are being flagged by users, not moderators. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

For more explanation see my comments at the top of the thread.

I see, my bad. Apologies for false accusations.

Because there are mountains of them and nothing has changed about the situation, so conversation ends up devolving into unproductive flaming.

Personal story - I was the person who used to get angry and outraged whenever these stories of harassment were published, taking a stance which was pro the supposed victim. Independently, I used to be a huge fan of Stallman and read a lot of his writings as well as what others wrote about him.

So when the story first broke out in 2019, my first reaction was "This is simply not possible." Of course, upon researching further in depth, I agree with the sentiments in the linked site and still strongly support Stallman.

I have come to realize that just jumping on the outrage train is not a good strategy and in fact can be dangerous. One must take the time to understand all the facts and only then come to a conclusion. For example, there are huge differences between the Susan Fowler and Ellen Pao stories whereas lot of people just treat them as the same.

Anyway, my 2 cents - get all the necessary background information first before labelling and assassinating the character of a person.

I just wonder why he hasn't updated or amended his website,

https://www.google.com/search?q=pedophile+site%3Astallman.or...

That doesn't appear to be his style. And even if he did update or amend old posts, there would still be archives and copies floating around that people could refer to if they felt the need.

He has changed his views on some topics over the years, including this: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-sep-dec.html#14_September...

It makes me wonder whether he is sincere in his new position. He could easily add a note to his prior statements in a minute's time. He chooses not to do it. Perhaps he doesn't do it because he doesn't want to change what's been written. To me it comes off as insincere given how easy it is to modify websites. Ultimately, what he does is his choice and how it's perceived is everyone else's.

The only difference I can see is that he could do himself a favor by amending the older note. Why do you think it could be sign of insincerity? There are also literally many thousands of political notes in his site, but people seem to be fixated on like five of them.

> It makes me wonder whether he is sincere in his new position.

Somebody who always says what he thinks without giving any thought to how it will be perceived, how it will affect his future relationships with people, his employment etc is probably not the person who will follow Hillary Clinton's lead and have "a public and a private" opinion.

All of this "stallman is a special person who does not need to follow even basic social norms" does not fly with me. He can put a little more effort into clarifying his new found views.

Did you ask him? Surely he knows more about it than some random person on HN. I am glad that he did not remove his previous statements though, it would be akin to rewriting history, although I think that a note saying that he changed his opinions would be nice.

good lord.

Probably for the same reason he hasn't amended his website to include a denial of wife beating: https://www.google.com/search?q=wife+beating+site%3Astallman...

I may not have all of the background information, but reading the open letter against the FSF board:

https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

and the incidents they cite:

https://rms-open-letter.github.io/appendix

I find that the signatories seem to be conflating expressions of opinion with action, and demand extreme action in the face of a collection of statements-of-opinion which they disagree with. But even this is not the worst part of the demand: The letter is not really targeting RMS - it targets anyone who is willing to _tolerate_ RMS, and specifically the FSF board.

It is imperative IMHO that this initiative be fended off, unless you'd like an FSF - and other NGOs - which shudders in fear at the thought of making statements or taking positions which are not in-line enough with mainstream politics. And they will be sure to police each other, since a rhetorical vice by one is a capital offense by all.

And that's all before getting into RMS' neuro-atypicality; and the fact that board membership is not management of the FSF; etc. I just don't think the appropriate defense here should focus on RMS.

Debian will make an announcement in a bit less than 2 weeks:

https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002

The most popular proposal seems to be "Call on the FSF to further its governance processes", but "Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF" and the support letter are also among the proposals.

So far we've heard that he has expressed questionable views in the past (not a crime) and that he can come across as a bit creepy to some people (again not a crime, I know tonnes of people like that). Basically he has committed thought crimes (to some people) and is being cancelled in a very obvious sense.

Given what he has achieved in his life that has benefited everyone of us, I'm amazed HN folk are so quick to go along with cancelling him. Shame on you.

Please don't do the never-ending flamewar on HN. That includes making spurious generalizations about the community and then shame-on-you-ing the spurious generalization. Tedious lock-in on intense positions against intense opposition kills curiosity, and eventually its own host.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We were barely able to keep this post alive. It doesn't matter. Stallman will probably be out of the FSF soon and people will keep thinking of him as a monster and be happy that they got rid of him in this way.

For every rational person like you who realises their mistake and decides to collect facts first in future, there are 100 others too angry or too obtuse to admit they made a mistake in the first place.

Senseless cancel culture needs to stop.

Anyway, my 2 cents - get all the necessary background information first before labelling and assassinating the character of a person.

I think this is covered in Jared Diamond's Collapse. During the Salem Witch Trials, there was a point where a good chunk of the accusations were motivated by getting someone out of the way, so they could get their land, or otherwise by land disputes.

Also covered there: Much of the Rwandan genocide seems to have been exploited by land and resource disputes.

Power corrupts. If you give people unchecked power, then that power will be abused. This is just human nature. One group of people who frequently get unchecked power are activists. The press is supposed to the one of their checks and balances, but they are frequently giving only softballs and a free pass. Often fellow journalists even prevent further investigations. This also worked against the aims of the #MeToo movement in the past. This kind of press manipulation needs to be called out. It shouldn't happen.

Many accusations at this point are likely to be exploited for ulterior motives. There's just too much unchecked power in such accusations now to expect otherwise.

This is how we get away from the pathologies of the mob -- We as a society need to regain our respect for due process, "innocent until proven guilty," and evidence!

There are a lot of dynamics and feedback loops at play here. It is a sad situation and I really do not know what can be done at this point...

Speak out against the pathologies of the mob, or stand by and watch them become the norm. Watch those norms displace the value of evidence, due process, innocent until proven guilty. There's your choice.

Lots of people fantasize about what they would have done, had they lived in dark historical period X. Well, consider this a half strength test.

cancel culture is not sustainable. without a unifying hate symbol it will dissolve.

What if the situation is what it is for YouTube "creators?" New ones are going to come along, so the system will go along treating them as disposable!

If you believe in the mission of the FSF, then you truly have your head in the sand if you think that resurrecting Stallman is going to help anything. Makes me think this is all culture warriors and nothing at all to do with advancing Free Software.

In many cases, advocates with the FSF are culture warriors of their own sort, one way or another. They once had that same insistence that you properly use their revolutionary jargon.

If Stallman has changed his views, why not update his old writings to say so?

https://www.google.com/search?q=pedophile+site%3Astallman.or...

Because they are explicitly denoted as old.

Unbelievable. This site adds insult to injury by defending pedophelia and links it to trans issues. Are they saying that if the latter is ok, the former is also ok? Sounds like it to me. RMS deserves all the rejection he is getting for this sentiment alone, never mind the other charges.

> But he did publish a highly controversial comment[2] in 2006 about the intention of pedophiles in The Netherlands to form a political party. Stallman wrote, "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntary pedophilia harms children." People today don't think that a prepubertal human being—a child—is capable of understanding all the implications of sexual activity, and in some cases this is so even after puberty. So, in widespread social opinion, “voluntary” does not apply. However, when we make an unprejudiced analysis of this thought, we can see a connection to skepticism which is typical of scientific thinking and inquisitive minds. Skepticism has a role to play in challenging social norms as in “I'm skeptical that human binary genders constitute an immutable truth.”

https://stallmansupport.org/debunking-false-accusations-agai...

I agree. This "debunking" is simply a defense of Stallman's views on pedophelia. And Stallman's statement is still on his website. Nothing has changed,

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html

I'm being downvoted into oblivion by people who believe children should be able to choose to have sex with adults. I have to guess because the downvoters won't leave comments defending their position of support for sex between children and adults. I am surprised that they exist on Hacker News, not by their cowardice.

Richard Stallman has changed his views on the matter with a very sincere newer note. I am not ok with adults having sex with children by the way and I never was.

Now, at what age do you think that a child is capable of giving consent to undergo hormone therapy and gender altering treatments or operations in general? Is 8 good? I think there has been some, you know, discussion about this as well.

All of these "taboo" matters have to be discussed at some point. Scientists discuss them and society discusses them every now and then, and they will be rediscussed sometime in the future, maybe in 10 years, maybe in 50, maybe in 200. It is kind of natural to discuss things.

The people who downvote you do not believe what you claim they do. That's the true reason you are downvoted.

Also, you are twisting the facts by trying to present a discussion about a certain topic as a call to engage in sexual activity.

As I said, I had to guess at why people were downvoting me because they weren't saying. A couple of people have since left comments. I am aware that children have complicated sexual feelings based on my own experience as a child. I think there's a time and a place to discuss this topic, such as between parents, doctors and educators. When RMS and other older males want to discuss childhood sexuality in broad terms it raises suspicions for many people. I think most people accept this reality, except perhaps the authors of this website. That was my point.

> I had to guess at why people were downvoting me because they weren't saying.

And you guessed "they're downvoting me because they're pedophiles?"

Maybe people aren't responding to you because they feel that from your initial frame on the topic and your decision to frame opponents on it as bad people, no fruitful discussion with you can be had.

I said "I'm being downvoted into oblivion by people who believe children should be able to choose to have sex with adults" I didn't say the were pedophiles. Some people believe the age of consent should be lowered. They don't necessarily have to be pedophiles and I'm not calling them that. Also, I've been on HN long enough to know most people don't bother to downvote. They do if they feel strongly about an issue. I think the opposite position of mine is that children should be able to make their own decisions about sex.

No, it is rather a defense of skepticism rather than of specific opinions. It does not say that both of them are the same.

>RMS deserves all the rejection he is getting for this sentiment alone

How so? He posts his raw thoughts in his blog. Surely we would not want to discourage skepticism and rationalism just because these thoughts are not currently common.

Please remember: the paradox of tolerance concerns these who withdraw from public dialog and instead take actions against these with different opinions and characteristics instead of engage them in a debate.

As for the other charges, they are similarly dubious at best.

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